Writing About Writing

Growing up, my parents gave me a typewriter that they used when they were in college.  I thought it was one of the coolest things ever, because you could actually flip a switch and the macine would go from typing in black ink, to red ink.  I know, I was easily impressed.  But I would sit up in my room, and just type stories.  I would type stories that I had thought up on my own, and sometimes I would type out stories I had read myself hundreds of times, almost reiterating them word for word.  I had my own little folder where I saved these literary masterpieces, knowing that someday the words would be published.

Flash forward to present day.  I no longer do my writing on a typewriter, althought I am wondering if revisiting that childhood medium will help make writing any easier.  I would say over the last, oh, maybe 8 years of my life I have written some pretty good stuff.  I can think of a couple stories in particular that have some real potential.  However, lately I have felt myself slipping.  No matter what anyone says, writing is hard.  It is hard to look at a blank computer screen and fill it with words.  No wait, scratch that, it is hard to fill the screen with words and have those words be compelling, interesting, and make sense.  Interesting writing is hard. 

Why is it that I used to be able to just sit down, write anything and everything that came to mind, and not worry about how it sounded, or if my sentences were in the right tense, or if my main character was becoming too predicable.  When did I lose that sense of not caring?  I mean, I have always cared about my writing but I never cared so much to the point where I was afraid to even try because I didn't want to fail.  There, I said it.  Fail.  The one thing I absolutely do not want to do.  I care so much that I have literally stopped because I don't want to do a crappy job.  And I think all writers go through this at some point.  I have to tell myself this because to think that I might be the only one is just too depressing to bear.

The thing is, when I actually do write, and I slip into that zone, that zone where the dialogue between the characters is practically writing itself, and I know exactly when and where the next plot twist needs to take place, it's during those moments that I feel.....alive.  It's just plain exhilerating.  But sometimes it only lasts a few pages, and then the fingers tapping the keys slow down, then stop altogether, and I stare at the screen and what I've just written and know that I've lost whatever momentum I had going.  But you see it's those moments, those breakthroughs that make all the blank screens, bad descriptions, and predictable story lines worth it.  Because in those moments I am creating, I am making things happen, I am producing INTERESTING WRITING!! 

I don't think that fear will ever completely leave me.  But there's something about the creative process that manages to trump those fears and doubts that plague me from time to time.  I'm not sure how to recapture the essence of that little girl, sitting up in her room, feeding sheet after sheet into the typewriter, maybe that time has come and gone.  But I know that little girl, who saved all those stories with the dream of one day being published, I know she wasn't just entertaining improbable fantasies.  I still have that goal, that desire, so I kind of feel like it's up to me now to make it happen.  No pressure, huh?